


No Rude Notes In Hell

by FacetiousKitten



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Am I doing this right?, Crowley Whump (Good Omens), Crowley got punished after the Bastille, Crowley's Century-Long Nap (Good Omens), Gen, How Do I Tag, Hurt No Comfort, Torture, Whump, fanfic contest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-16
Updated: 2020-04-16
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:02:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23678845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FacetiousKitten/pseuds/FacetiousKitten
Summary: Written for Whiteley Foster's fanfic contest, based on her gorgeous art and this prompt:"You ever wonder why Crowley took a decades long nap after he rescued Aziraphale from the Bastille, and then woke up looking for a way to defend himself against his own people? Because I do."I wonder, too.Find the art piece on tumblr here:https://whiteleyfoster.tumblr.com/post/612585496466587648/if-my-people-hear-i-rescued-an-angel-ill-be-the
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 39





	No Rude Notes In Hell

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WhiteleyFoster](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhiteleyFoster/gifts).



> I love Crowley. I also love torturing him, apparently.
> 
> I'm sorry.
> 
> _You're welcome._

Despite the revolution, despite the looming specter of the guillotine, Crowley and Aziraphale had a grand time in Paris. If Crowley used a tiny miracle on some men to make them slip and fall into horse shit, well, no one would mind. The woman they had been dragging toward the prison ran away. Thus, there was an escaped criminal, free to roam the streets. Job well done, demon Crowley. Job well done. 

(Never mind the fact that the woman had likely done nothing wrong, and obviously wasn’t a noble. Job well done. Period, end of story.)

A week after he saw Aziraphale onto a ship across the channel, Crowley took his own trip back to England. Boat rides weren’t his favorite – too many uncomfortable memories about a floating zoo and a man named Noah. However, watching the coast of France get further and further away made for a jolly good time.

Crowley had always enjoyed a touch of chaos, what with being a demon. But the violence, the deprivation, the sheer _depravity_ of the revolution was a bit much. He’d never verbalize his disgust at the situation, but he was quick to leave once he saw the extent of… things.

While standing there, leaning against the gunwale,* Crowley let himself feel an iota of delight. Au revoir, France. Enjoy your big head-cutting machine.

If he was also delighting at the upcoming reunion with Aziraphale, well, that was no one’s business, was it?

A grasping touch to his wrist interrupted his reverie. Crowley looked down, and saw someone’s grimy mitts wrapped around his wrist, their fingernails caked with filth. A fellow demon, one covered in seaweed, with a fish of some sort peering over its shoulder, had found him.

“Croooooowleeeeey…” gurgled the demon.

“Uh, hi,” Crowley said. “I don’t think we’ve met.”

The other demon’s filthy, pocked face split into a fanged expression that was not unlike a smile, but somewhere to the side of one. Its fish gawped.

Then the demon tugged Crowley’s wrist.

And then Crowley was falling. Not capital-F Falling; he’d never forget what that felt like. This fall was a face-first immersion baptism in cold seawater, shocked and gasping for air he didn’t need and inhaling lungfuls of saltwater he _definitely_ didn’t need. He could discorporate this way, and wouldn’t that be a doozy of a thing to explain to head office?

Before that could happen, he slammed into a rock hard surface – oh look it actually _is_ rock – and water erupted from his mouth and nose. Mount Vesuvius, he was, except wet and freezing, spewing water instead of ash. After the initial geyser was up and out, he coughed up yet more water, gagging between the coughs, until his stomach ached and his throat burned like he’d swallowed the contents of a lit tobacco pipe.

“Are you quite done?”

“Guh?” Crowley sputtered, expelling yet more of his stomach and/or lung contents. Dread filled him quicker than the sea had his lungs, because across from him were Dukes Hastur and Ligur. He scrambled off the rough-hewn ground, scraping his hands, but was too shaky to stand. Propping himself on one knee, he wiped his mouth on his sleeve and attempted a sycophantic bow.

“To what do I owe-” His sentence dissolved into a cough. “-do I owe the honor?”

Both dukes smirked. A very, very bad sign.

“Enjoy your time in France?” Ligur asked.

“Yeah. Lots of beheadings. Very entertaining.”

Hastur leaned his head to the side, jaw jutting in a fierce expression. “Sorry I missed it. Take a seat, Crowley.”

Directly beneath Crowley, a wooden chair sprouted from the rock like a splintery, lightning fast flower, colliding painfully with his arse and lifting him out of the kneeling position. The fish demon reappeared – _where had they been?_ – and laced rope around Crowley’s wrists, tying them together behind his back.

“Oh, ah, that’s really not necessary,” Crowley said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Now Hastur smiled, an all out, for real smile, and Crowley didn’t like it one bit.

“No,” said the duke. “You aren’t.”

Crowley squirmed, feigning an attempt to get comfortable while he felt the ropes. They were too tight, and bound more than his wrists. They ensured that his powers were inaccessible. Of course, with his feet free, he could try to run, but what would be the point? They’d find him wherever he went, and that was if he got away from them in the first place.

“Ligur?” Hastur prompted. The shorter duke extended his arms to summon a fireball, which hovered above his upturned palms. Flickers of orange and trembling shadows danced inelegantly on his malicious face.

Crowley’s nose twitched. That was hellfire. All demons could summon it, but maintaining it beyond a quick burst required a large amount of power that would exhaust all but the strongest demons in less than a minute. Dukes of Hell were some of the strongest demons.

Ligur was a duke.

Hastur was a duke.

Crowley was fucked.

The chameleon on Ligur’s head lifted its tail, as if to warm it by the fire. “Lots of beheadings, you say? Heard there was a prison break, too. Just your style, innit?”

“Letting those nobles out caused more chaos,” Crowley said even as his stomach dropped like it had refilled with seawater. He _had_ worked a quick miracle on his way out of the prison with Aziraphale, hoping that if they were discovered, Hell would notice the released humans and overlook the rescued angel.

Hastur rifled in his grungy overcoat’s pockets. “Yes, yes. Turns out, there might have been an angel in there, too.”

Crowley snorted, aiming for disbelief. “An angel? In that place? Doubtful. Trust me, France is wretched with sin. There’s _no way_ Heaven is anywhere _near._ ”

“Demons trusting each other? _Doubtful,_ ” Ligur said.

Whatever they were planning, Crowley almost wished they would stop all the buildup and get on with it. (They wouldn’t. Watching someone’s fear increase, enjoying that horrible anticipation, really got them going.)

“Guys, honestly,” he tried. “Doesn’t this seem, you know. A bit much? When an angel only _might_ have been there?” He shrugged the best he could with his hands bound. “Which one wasn’t.”

Hastur pulled something from his overcoat: a thin metal rod, twisted into a distinctive design at the tip. He stared at Crowley as he held it in the fire, letting the design heat until it burned bright orange.

“Just the rumor’s enough reason to make an example of you,” Ligur said. “Can’t have other demons suspecting we let you get away with rescuing an angel.”

“I… I didn’t…”

“Do you know what this little symbol is?” Hastur pulled the rod from the flames. Toward the end, where it glowed menacingly, two short lines sat perpendicular to the rod, and beneath them, an infinity symbol.

Weakly, Crowley said, “A Leviathan Cross.”

“A fitting brand for Hell’s little snake.”

Crowley shook his head, uttering pathetic sounds of protest. The fish demon clutched his shoulders and pressed them to the back of the chair, then yanked open the collar of his fine coat and finer shirt. Fabric ripped, and buttons sprang away, hitting the floor, tinkling like the cheerful music of hard candies on the front counter of a sweets shop.

“Further down,” Hastur said, and dried Crowley’s clothes and skin with a wave. “The brand won’t be even on the bones, there.”

The fish demon ripped further, exposing the top of Crowley’s chest.

Hastur came closer, as did Ligur, who kept his hellfire going. It cracked and popped in his palms, a twisted reflection of a peaceful campfire. Hastur dipped the rod into the flames, showing his buttery, piss-yellow teeth in a smile that was more snarl than merriment, and told the fish demon to keep their captive still.

Barely noticing the harsh grip in his hair or the unforgiving forearm across his shoulders, Crowley’s vision narrowed onto the glowing symbol. He didn’t exert any power to slow time, he couldn’t, but it slowed nonetheless. The journey of the metal to Crowley’s skin took a year, five years, a hundred, normally naught but a blink to an immortal. His toes curled in his shoes. His fingernails cut his palms. His jaw clenched around whines. His eyes watched the Leviathan Cross descend.

_Agony._

_Smoke._

_Searing flesh._

_Scent of charred meat._

_Distant screams._

_Crowley’s screams._

“Hold him!” Hastur bellowed, and pressed the brand, steadily, steadily, steadily cooking through Crowley’s skin and into the underlying muscle.

Still Crowley screamed.

The brand retracted, taking chunks of skin and melted, dripping fat with it. Hastur stuck it in the hellfire. It sizzled.

The wound retained the heat. Hellfire was good at overstaying its welcome.

Crowley’s consciousness reduced to pain. Nothing but pain. Conversation carried on without his knowledge for an untold length of time.

There was a sensation of tapping on his cheek, but it was vague, blurry, filtered through a dream. The sensation intensified until it became a solid slap. He grunted.

“Snake. Now.”

Again he grunted, roughly inflected in the pattern of a question.

“Your snake form!” Ligur commanded. “Do it.”

More grunts. These were many steps removed from outright laughter, but hung on branches of the same family tree.

“Can’t,” Crowley said.

There was another slap, jostling him enough to reignite the lingering pain in his chest. The two dukes laid hands on his head, funneling infernal magic into him. Against his wishes, his corporation elongated, legs fusing together and torso absorbing his arms. It felt wrong, so wrong, losing control of the one thing he should have sole discretion over: his _self._

Three people straddled him – one at his tail, one at his neck, and one at his middle.

“Don’t budge an inch,” Ligur said, “or it’ll be _much_ worse for you.”

The agony of the brand returned with a vengeance, about one-third of the way down the length of him. His tail thrashed helplessly and he hiss-shrieked with the might of a thousand banshees, but he tensed his middle and held it still because he knew the difference between a hollow threat and a solid promise.

Crowley’s snake scales retained the hellfire heat better than his human skin, so this second brand burned hotter, longer. Consciousness was as familiar a concept as Einstein’s Theory of Relativity to that hideous, reeking fish demon, yet Crowley didn’t black out. No mercies in Hell.

He came to after a series of vicious kicks to his snake body. Lacking the strength to bite, his mouth lolled open and released a soft hiss.

“There you are,” Hastur said. “We’re gonna change your form again and send you Earthside. I recommend you memorize this little lesson.”

As if Crowley could forget. It wouldn’t be hard to rid himself of the brands, once he regained enough strength to wish away the scars and replace them with regular old skin. Wounds that deep would probably require a few repairative sessions, perhaps a dozen due to the hellfire, but he could manage. The pain, however? No. Never.

Two legs formed, as well as the rest of his human shape, and he was on his feet. Wobbly and weak, moving like a wee old granny, he let the dukes send him on to Earth.

Somehow, Crowley made his way to London. He thought of Aziraphale, but decided against a visit. He should be busy with his bookshop, anyway; the angel would be fine. Better to get some breathing room now, put a little space between them, just in case Hell was monitoring Crowley more closely than usual.

So, he found his flat, used a touch of magic to drop information into his servants' minds on how to keep his affairs in order, and went to sleep. Crowley slept for a very long time.

* * *

_*A_ gunwale _, pronounced_ gun-ull _, is the railing or border around the edge of a boat’s top deck. I didn’t know what to call that until my nautical obsessed spouse decoded my insufficient description and kindly answered my question. Bless him._

**Author's Note:**

> This may change a bit over time, as I habitually over-edit AND I am new to posting my work publicly. Sorry. I'm the worst, and my opinions of my writing aren't great, either.


End file.
